Stephen's Journal

So I have lived here in Deep River for almost 2 months, through the worst of the winter, and as expected, there has been a fair bit of snow and cold days. In fact it is even snowing now. Interestingly though, this is the first time I have seen any packing snow here. Usually it is cold dry snow which is great for shovelling or skiing, but today it is about 1 degree Celsius and packing snow. This is unfortunate because it is so muchmore work to shovel and harder to ski on, since it is heavier and stickier.

Oh well, what is one to do, I guess there will be more packing snow now as the winter weather starts to break and spring will start to arrive in about another month or so. Here's to more snow and good skiing!

So living in Deep River, I have spent some of my time cross country skiing. The skiing here is really nice. There is a trail system at the edge of the town that is maintained by the local cross country ski club. The trails are groomed as needed, by volunteers from the club. There is an abundance of nice dry snow, so the conditions are very nice.

The difference between skiing here and skiing at any of the other trail systems I have been on, is the style of skiing. This is partly affected by the quality of grooming. Other than the half-assed attempt by the Grand River Conservation Authority, everywhere else I have skiied has used large Cat equipment, similar to the equipment to groom the hills at downhill skiing resorts, to groom their trails and in the process made the trails very smooth. This eliminates all the little bumps and gullies along the trail. This is arguably a good result. Any place that has world class skiing and World Cup races has to meet standards for the condition of the trail and quality of the grooming. However, since resources are much less, (this is all volunteers after all), the grooming is done by a couple of snowmobiles or small cat like pieces of equipment (I haven't actually seen it) and a tracksetter. The result is that there tends to be a number of little dips and bumps in the trails.

In the commercial, heavily groomed ski systems, a lot of the skiing is merely keeping your skis in the tracks and propelling yourself forward and except for some hills where you actually have to work hard, there is only a moderate challenge for the technically proficient skiier. Here on the other hend, with significantly rougher tracks, but still well trackset, the trails are quite technical in nature. I find that the skiing here is the most technically challenging skiing I have done anywhere, and is very enjoyable. I even manage to fall occasionally because I let myself get off balance, or out of position. The most technically challenging skiing of all is skiing home from work. There the trail is not packed or trackset by anything other than other skiiers and where they fall :) It is a most enjoyable experience and work out.

I walked the the Beer Store friday evening. I had checked online and discovered that they were open till 9 at night. See here for the operating hours. That is the way life is around here though. I have to plan my life around the hours of the stores I need to go to. Another example of this was last weekend I wanted to go get a haircut, so I went to the barbershop on Saturday and discovered that they were closed. I went back again yesterday and found that they were open, but they were only open till 3PM on saturdays. Like who has ever heard of a barber shop closing at 3PM on a Saturday, and they are the only one in town as well. Other ackward hours are Valu Mart. They are only open till 6PM Monday through Wednesday. At least they are open later on Thursday and Friday. If I hurry, I can get to Valu Mart after I get home from work if I need to pick up something, but I certainly don't have time to do groceries. Well it makes for an interesting life. I certainly appreciate longer store hours in larger cities now though.